{"id":349,"date":"2007-08-21T20:26:06","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T00:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/vbac_flimflammery_1"},"modified":"2013-11-18T00:05:37","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T00:05:37","slug":"vbac_flimflammery_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2007\/08\/vbac_flimflammery_1.html","title":{"rendered":"VBAC Flim-flammery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday NPR&#8217;s <cite>All Things Considered<\/cite> had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=13764544\">segment about the falling VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) rate<\/a>. The piece included an interview with Steven Lewis, the Chief Medical Officer of Flagstaff Medical Center. According to Lewis, his facility could not offer VBAC to mothers because they could not guarantee the immediate availability of a surgical team, as per <a href=\"http:\/\/www.midwiferytoday.com\/articles\/acog.asp\">ACOG&#8217;s (flawed) VBAC guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The NPR reporter bracketed the segment with a young mother named Audrey Creed. Creed had wanted a VBAC, but had been forced to have a repeat cesarean by her hospital&#8217;s policy, even though medical evidence demonstrates that <a href=\"http:\/\/childbirthconnection.org\/article.asp?ck=10210\">VBAC is safer than planned repeat cesarean section<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Creed might or might not have been aware of this medical evidence. But being no fool, she cuts right to the chase: &#8220;That&#8217;s what the hospital is there for &#8212; to handle emergencies.&#8221; Exactly. Not only do dire emergencies occur in non-VBAC labors, but hospitals are <em>more than happy<\/em> to offer services that substantially increase the chances of an emergency, such as an epidural or induction of labor. Any hospital that claims it can&#8217;t handle VBAC safely is admitting that it is not adequately prepared to handle <em>any<\/em> labor.<\/p>\n<p>So to sum up, Dr. Steven Lewis has just conceded on national radio that his facility is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nahealth.com\/pp_fmc\/fmc_pp_home.htm\">deathtrap for laboring women<\/a>. Until Flagstaff Medical Center can offer adequate emergency care for its patients, Arizona mothers should avoid it like the plague.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Steven Lewis has just conceded on national radio that his facility is a deathtrap for laboring women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":847,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}